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Early years

Margolis was born in Los Angeles, California. She started her modeling career on her own. While attending college at California State University, Northridge, she had a project in business class that dealt with greeting cards. She took this idea further and started selling a line of cards with her body dressed in lingerie on them. She even put her phone number on the cards.[2] Her modeling career took off when agents started asking about the woman on the cards. She has modeled in advertising for companies such as Reebok, Vidal Sassoon, Coors, Hanes, and Sunkist. Among late night television viewers, she is best known as an infomercial co-presenter on classic ads (e.g. with Tony Robbins) as well as shady ones (e.g. Don Lapre's "tiny little ads"). Margolis has also appeared briefly as one of Barker's Beauties in 1995 on the game show The Price Is Right. She had a late night Saturday talk show in 2000 called The Cindy Margolis Show, which was filmed in Miami Beach, Florida.

Career

Margolis emerged as a star in her own right in the early days of the Internet. As she had done with greeting cards, she created her own website rather than wait for opportunity to find her. She was named Yahoo! Internet Life magazine's "Queen of the Internet" from 1996-1999. She also found her way into the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records as a result of being the "most downloaded" person in 1999. At the age of 34, the peak of her popularity, she was downloaded 70,000 times in a span of 24 hours. In this time, she never posed topless or nude in appearances on her website or in Playboy. She was deposed as the "most downloaded" woman on December 5, 2000 by the prodigiously endowed Danni Ashe.

In November of 2005 Margolis teamed up with the World Poker Tour to become the new hostess for Chipleaders.

In an April 2006 interview with The Washington Post, Margolis stated that she had recently posed fully nude for the December 2006 issue of Playboy magazine. She has posed for Playboy many times in the past, but never nude. She cited her good looks at age 40 and wanting to be an inspiration to mothers and women her age as the reason she chose to finally pose nude. "It will be fun to go up against the 20-year-olds and show them that they don't have anything on me!" she told the Associated Press. In an interview with EXTRA she said that Desperate Housewives had been an inspiration for her as it showed that mothers her age can also be fit and sexy. Margolis' nude pictorial will be published in the December 2006 issue of Playboy. A portion of the proceeds from issues sold will go to a charity for which Margolis is a spokesperson, Resolve. The charity aims to get fertility treatment better covered by insurance companies. Margolis told Playboy that she had been approached to pose since 18, but felt empowered that Playboy still wanted her as a model at the age of 40.[2] A portion of the sales of her issue went to her charity, the Cindy Margolis Get a Download of This Fertility Fund.[2] She was very proud to have posed, stating:
"Me, of all people, the ultimate girl next door, the one who made it by not taking off her clothes. And now my crowning achievement is doing Playboy and being comfortable in my own skin."[2]

In November of 2006 Cindy signed an exclusive poker representation agreement with Tropical Poker. Margolis has become a highly sought-after poker player and will represent Tropical Poker in the press, media interviews, poker events and appearances, as well as at the 2007 World Series of Poker.

Personal life

Margolis was married to restaurateur Guy Starkman from 1998-2009. Following fertility treatment, she gave birth to a son, Nicholas Isaac, in 2002 and twin daughters, Sabrina and Sierra, in 2005 via a surrogate mother.